Small world

The architect Renzo Piano, designer of the Shard, has a new project that’s not as grand: it’s a 65 sq ft home for £17,000

With the Diogene, Piano has realised his dream of designing a tiny living space (Julien Lanoo)

How much living space do we really need? Many of us could not countenance
anything less than an open-plan kitchen/diner, a garden — perhaps, at a
push, a patio — and at least one spare bedroom. So how would we fare in an
environment measuring only 65 sq ft? Diogene, by the Pritzker prizewinning
architect Renzo Piano, is just that. The self-contained, minimalist living
space — which stands 12ft at its highest point — is a world away from his
most noted recent work, the Shard skyscraper in London, the tallest building
in the European Union.

The concept for the structure — named after Diogenes of Sinope, the ancient
Greek philosopher said to have lived in a barrel because he considered
worldly luxuries to be superfluous — has haunted Piano since his teens. “I
was 18 and my dream was to build a small house,” says the architect, now 75,
who collaborated in the 1970s with